Grim grim grim would be a good description of the old docks area on the left bank of the Seine in the 13th arrondissement.

That was before the Cité de la Mode et du Design came along to, err, greenify up the joint. Anyone who has seen this building's new extruberance won't easily forget it.

Ghastly, I'm sorry, grassy green and sinewy curves clad the Seine-side in an audacious and unique design quite unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's no surprise that it was designed by the same architects as did the Pompidou Centre restaurant, which has been described as looking like something from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

What we see here, though, is another oddity. A huge chunk of the same radical design seems to have been unceremoniously dumped on the quayside unattached to anything. Which is unfortunate, as it has two huge holes desperately looking to make a fusion with one of its own, like some sort of severed worm vainly looking for its other half...

My guess is that it's part of an extention to what's already in place, although I can't quite see how it's going to fit together just yet.

It's impressive anyway, and I like it, as usual for my standard reason: someone dared to do it! Paris' melding of the modern and the mundane (i.e. classic) continues apace, and so far, so much the better for it, as long as the heart and soul of the place remain in place.

Paris is no longer a stagnant museum piece, but some are worried it's going too quickly in the other direction and is in danger of becoming just another moribund metropolis. Skyscrapers are planned for the outskirts and the symbolic motherlode of the city, Les Halles, is being ripped apart again. Stagnation or irreparation - or somewhere in the middle; where do you stand?